The raise
On October 7, 2026, Nous Research confirmed it had raised a $90 million Series B at a $1.5 billion valuation. The round was led by Robot Ventures, with NVIDIA, Microsoft's M12, Samsung, Union Square Ventures, Y Combinator, Menlo Ventures, and 1789 Capital also backing it. Total funding now stands at about $158 million, following a $50 million Series A led by Paradigm in April 2025. The money is earmarked for one mission: bringing the company's open-source AI agent, Hermes, into businesses. Revenue is growing fast too — the company reportedly hit about $36 million in annualized revenue by mid-September 2026 and expects to pass $100 million before year-end, according to The Wall Street Journal.
What Hermes Agent is
Hermes Agent launched in February 2026 under the MIT license, one of the most permissive open-source licenses available — anyone can use, modify, and redistribute it. It is an autonomous agent with persistent memory that writes its own reusable skills as it works, getting better at your tasks over time. It can run locally on your own hardware or through hosted options, on macOS, Windows, and Linux, and even inside messaging apps like Telegram, Slack, and WhatsApp. The adoption numbers are striking: the company says Hermes has been cloned more than 24 million times and drives roughly 2.5% of all global AI token usage.
Hermes for Businesses
The new money funds "Hermes for Businesses," adding the features corporate IT departments require before an AI agent touches company data: single sign-on, detailed auditing, and workspace controls. Companies can deploy customized agents for multi-step workflows, pick underlying models by price and goal, and keep sensitive data private — either running on Nous's servers with team spending limits or entirely on their own infrastructure in the enterprise version. The pitch is simple and powerful: own your agent stack instead of renting it from a closed platform.
Why it matters
Nous was founded in 2023 to push back against centralized, closed AI — and now has a billion-and-a-half-dollar valuation to prove the idea has legs. The combination is rare: a genuinely open-source agent with real revenue and real enterprise demand. If businesses can run capable AI agents on their own infrastructure while their data stays home, the walled-garden platforms suddenly have serious competition. Open source is no longer just an ideology; it is a funded, revenue-generating strategy knocking on the enterprise door.
The business model: open core, paid control
Nous is running the classic open-core playbook: the agent stays open source, and the paid tiers add the control that businesses will pay for. Reporting from launch describes three paid editions — a consumer cloud version, plus Business and Enterprise tiers where administrators can set team-level token limits and share agent customizations across colleagues. Enterprise customers can run everything on their own infrastructure, while the Business tier runs on Nous's servers with shared budgets and per-user spending caps. A mobile app is also in the works, according to launch reporting. The bet is that companies will pay not for the agent itself, but for governance, visibility, and control around it.
Would you trust an open-source AI agent with your company's workflows?
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